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Research Impact

Resources and tools for demonstrating the impact of your scholarly and creative works, and managing your online scholarly presence and reputation.

Start at any time in your career

Whether your career is months-long or decades-long, it's never too late to start thinking about ways to network and manage your scholarly identity and reputation. Think about what kind of online presence you want to create, what you want to do online, and who you would like to interact with. These things will help you get started, and the rest of the information on this page will help with resources to start your journey.

Why should I share my research in addition to publishing it?

Sharing your research in other places, such as a researcher profile, personalized website, social media, or a preprint server, allows a wider audience to read your research. This could lead to future collaborators, more citations, improvements in scientific findings or writing, and generally more impact and reach for your scholarly or creative works.

How do I network online with colleagues in my field?

Networking can happen in a variety of ways online. First, you'll want to check with colleagues or mentors in your field to see which platforms that others in your discipline are using so you can connect with the most people. Next, you'll want to spend time creating an account and building up your profile


Looking for collaborators? Check out these databases that can help you find colleagues to collaborate with on future projects.

Dimensions. This is a database that allows researchers to track trends in grant funding and publication, filtering and sorting by subject area, funder, institution, and dollar amounts over time. Search by subject area or topic, abstract, author, institution, or keyword. 

Inspec Analytics. This database allows researchers in the physics and engineering disciplines to search for and monitor research output at the institution, national, and global levels to compare research output and locate potential collaborators.

Pivot. Run by the Office of Sponsored Programs, this searchable database allows researchers to locate funding opportunities and potential collaborators based on their past research and experience. Users can set up automatic alerts to be alerted of potential future opportunities.

Quick Tips for Academic Networking

It's important to make sure that you're presenting the professional profile that you want to when interacting on networking sites. This can range anywhere from entirely professional and polished, to someone that shares a mix of professional and personal things on their profile. The ultimate mix of these is up to you as the user, and there is no right or wrong approach! 

Here are some things to consider before joining a networking site:

  • Don't share your personal contact information
  • Includes links to your other profiles, such as ORCID, in your profile information
  • Share links to your research and "hype" your publications when they are released
  • Find and follow others in your field to build your network, and don't forget to engage regularly!

Share your publications responsibly and safely

Sharing your research, creative works, and publications on networking sites is a major part of the appeal and purpose of these sites. However, it's very important to remember that some publications may be protected under publisher copyright - which means that you might not be able to upload the fulltext version of a publication, and should share a link to it instead. 

Here's some things to think about before sharing your work:

  • What is the publisher's sharing policy?
  • Is the work published open access? Do you require permission to share your work on other sites?
  • Who do you want to share your work with? Why are you sharing your work?
  • Would it be better to share a direct link to my work instead of the full text?
  • Would publishing the work on a preprint server OR an open access repository, and then sharing the link on your networking site work better?

Academia.edu logo

Academia.edu is one of the most popular and commonly used networking sites for academics. It's primarily used by those in the social sciences and humanities fields, but can and is used by other disciplines.

Some features of Academia.edu include:

  • Create a free account (or upgrade to a Premium account)
  • Upload and share your scholarly work with others, and request their feedback
  • Follow other researchers, and have researchers follow you to build connections
  • Send and receive private messages
  • View some analytics (site metrics) on work shared on the site

Bluesky butterfly logo

Bluesky is a newer social networking site that has a broad range of users, including many within academic circles. There is a broad range of disciplines represented on the site, so it is up to the user to find and create a community within.

Some features of Bluesky include:

  • Create a free account
  • Track trending discussions based on topics, tags, or users
  • Create custom feeds and lists to follow
  • Provide and receive feedback on work shared
  • Follow others within and outside your field
  • Follow conference discussions live
  • Send and receive private messages

LinkedIn logo

LinkedIn is a popular networking site that is used in some academic networks, as well as largely in the private/corporate sector. Users from a wide variety of disciplines and specialties use this site to network and find colleagues.

Some features of LinkedIn include:

  • Create a free account (with the option to upgrade to a Premium account)
  • Upload scholarly work and share to your newsfeed
  • Engage in scholarly discussions with others in and out of your network
  • Find collaborators
  • Search for jobs and apply using their job search features
  • Share posts, write commentary, and comment/react to others
  • Send and receive private messages

Mastodon logo

Mastodon is a newer networking platform that uses the Fediverse to build channels that users can join and interact with others on. Mastodon uses individual servers - so users find and select the server that most relates to them or their interests and interact with users primarily on that same server. 

Some features of Mastodon include:

  • Create a free account on a server (some may require an invitation to join)
  • Share your scholarly works and obtain feedback
  • Engage in scholarly discussion
  • Find collaborators
  • Send and receive private messages

Reddit logo

Reddit is a social platform that allows users from all over the world to make and share posts, comment, engage, and more. There are communities (called subreddits) that allow users to engage with specific audiences. Some academic specific subreddits include r/academia, r/professor, r/gradstudent, and many more.

Some features of Reddit include:

  • Create a free and totally anonymous account
  • Join communities with others of similar interests
  • Make posts to engage in conversations with others
  • Comment and react to others' posts, upvoting ones you like or think further the conversation
  • Send and receive private messages

ResearchGate logo

ResearchGate is another extremely popular academic networking site. While used by a wide variety of academics, it is primarily used by those in the sciences, mathematics, and computer science disciplines. 

Some basic features of ResearchGate include:

  • Create a free account
  • Upload your scholarly works to share with others and obtain feedback
  • Engage in scholarly discussions on message boards
  • Find researchers and potential collaborators
  • Track scholarly impact using some basic metrics and analytics
  • Search for new positions
  • Send and receive private messages
  • Assign a DOI to a preprint shared on the site

Preprint Servers

Preprint servers are digital platforms that allow researchers to share their preliminary research for crowdsourced peer review, and one method of making published scholarship open access. There are a wide variety of servers available, and they are generally organized by subject area (such as Biology or Medicine). Before joining a preprint server and sharing your work, make sure that you are allowed to share your work under any existing copyright or publisher agreements.

Below are links to some of the more popular servers available.

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